Junior Sleuth Academy & Book Launch: The Dead Kid Detective Agency, Loyalist to a Fault (Toronto)

Small Print Toronto 

in partnership with Toronto Public Library

presents 

Junior Sleuth Academy

a mystery-writing workshop for writers aged 8-12

with artist-author 

Evan Munday

creator of the widely lauded series
The Dead Kid Detective Agency

on

Sunday, October 18th, 2015

2:30 p.m.

at 

Lillian Smith Library 

239 College St. (at Spadina)

Toronto

Get your free tickets here.

The workshop involves some 

supernatural sleuthing and creating spooky stories 

followed by

the launch 

(with books available for purchase and signing)

of Book 3 in The Dead Kid Detective Agency series

Loyalist To A Fault

by Evan Munday

ECW Press

9781770410749

304 pp.

Ages 9-13

September 2015

If you've kept up with the series, you'll know that October Schwartz made a promise to help solve the mysteries of the deaths of her five dead accomplices: Morna MacIsaac, Cyril Cooper, Tabetha Scott, Kirby LaFlamme, and Derek Running Water.  In Loyalist to a Fault, October looks into the death of Cyril Cooper in 1783, back to the time of the United Empire Loyalists.

Playing with Matches

by Suri Rosen
ECW Press
978-1-77041-182-1
256 pp.
Ages 11+
September, 2014

Forgive me my ignorance but I have to share my silly prediction about Playing with Matches before I read the book. When I first read the title, I thought the book must deal with arson and lighting fires.  Wrong!  But, though Playing with Matches doesn't have anything to do with fire, teen narrator Raina Resnick learns pretty quickly that you can still get burned with romantic matches!

With her older sister Leah getting married in a few months to Ben and starting their new life together in Toronto, Raina is sent to live with her Aunt Mira and Uncle Eli in Toronto to provide some stability from her parents' regular migrations for her dad's work and to be there for her sister prior to the marriage.  But when Ben calls off the wedding because of Raina's behaviour and Leah blames Raina for ruining her happiness, Raina feels completely friendless.  Not surprising she befriends a woman, Tamara, with whom she regularly sits on the bus to school.  In fact, learning that Tamara is single and desperate to find a life partner, Leah arranges for her to meet Jeremy, the thirty-ish Jewish man who boards with Aunt Mira and Uncle Eli.

This is the beginning of Matchmaven.com, the site Raina uses to communicate anonymously and arrange the match between Tamara and Jeremy which is a hit. (Though not so much for Leah whom Aunt Mira had planned to set up with Jeremy!)  But when Tamara shares the site with her friends, including Leah, Raina is left wondering whether she actually has a gift for matchmaking or if it was just luck.

Meanwhile, Raina is being watched very carefully at home and at school to ensure she's not up to her old antics.  Taking care of her grandmother, Bubby Bayla, Raina finds the older woman has great spirit and skill for getting into her own trouble, but she is supportive of Raina.  Then a fortuitous mistake (while running an errand for her aunt) introduces Raina to a Professor Kellman, a lonely widower with a computer which he allows her to use for her matchmaking, unknowingly.  And the pairing of Raina at school with a geeky girl, Dahlia Engel, to help Raina with her school work brings a tech wizard and friend to Raina finally.

The complexity and hilarity of Raina attempting to control her matchmaking enterprise, which continues to blossom through word of mouth, while trying to make things right with Leah (including finding Leah her own partner) and keeping up her school work and resolving the trouble that caused her to leave her last school and humiliate her family will keep the reader eager to turn the page and learn what else can go wrong or perhaps right. Raina has much to worry about, including the possibility of "matchmaking malpractice" (pg. 146) but with her growing maturity and good heart, Raina has all of the best intentions and is less negligent with her actions and voice.

Playing with Matches is a fabulously unique story–formal matchmaking is definitely not a regular theme in YA–that embeds all the angst of falling in love and growing up and doing right by your family and yourself all under one cover.  I believe that the story will definitely resonate more for Jewish readers who may understand the cultural nuances of dating, dress, and relationships better than I could.  Having grown up in Toronto, I couldn't understand how the only people Raina met were Jewish, or how she happens to enter the wrong house far from home and it be the unlocked home of a Jewish man that her aunt knows, or that her sister's fiancé would break off the wedding because of something inconsiderate Raina did (not murderous, just inconsiderate).  Those inexplicable questions kept me from buying wholeheartedly into the story.

But Suri Rosen can turn a phrase well and get me laughing with the antics of her characters, who are definitely larger than life, and undoubtedly has a plethora of stories to tell if Playing with Matches is any indication of the experiences with which she is well versed. I look forward to reading more from this author (though I hope she will recognize that not all her readers are Jewish and may need a bit more background to understand the full story).

Depth of Field: A Pippa Greene Novel

by Chantel Guertin

ECW Press

978-1-77041-183-8

208 pp.

Ages 13+

For release August, 2014

Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy

Sixteen-year-old Pippa Greene, introduced in Chantel Guertin's The Rule of Thirds (ECW Press, 2013), is off to New York City to attend the two-week Tisch photography camp, along with Ben Baxter, the guy at school whose deplorable actions almost cost her that opportunity.  And, though she's upset to be leaving her new boyfriend, Dylan, and agreeing to refrain from communicating with him by text, email or phone (apparently to make their reunion all the sweeter), Pippa is determined to take all she can from this learning experience.

Pippa becomes fast friends with her roommate, Ramona Haverland, which is helpful for assignment work since Pippa is very unfamiliar with NYC.  Unfortunately, she and Ramona find that working with Ben Baxter, whom Pippa has relegated to "Dead to Me" status, occasionally is helpful. And as awkward as their occasional encounters are, Pippa is beginning to understand his motivation for what he did to her, and even suggest ways to help him resolve his own father issues.

Pippa's own father issue stems from the amazing bond she had with her dad when he was alive and now following in his photographic footsteps.  Fortunately she has the opportunity to work with  famous photographer David Westerly, who was also her father's best friend in college.  With David as a mentor and a valuable source of information, Pippa decides the theme for her first week's assignment will be her father: what he liked to do in New York City; where he liked to go; how her dad and mom met; etc.  Surprisingly, Pippa's mom is less than enthusiastic about Pippa working with David, as is her Aunt Emmy who lives in Pippa's dad's old apartment.

While David can be a self-absorbed jerk, he does present Pippa with a host of opportunities to develop her photographic skills and creativity, as well as learn more about her dad and ultimately herself.

Chantel Guertin throws a number of twists into Depth of Field that readers couldn't possible predict, which is as it should be.  If everything was obvious and laid out in front for the reader, it would surely be a dull read.  Just like Pippa who seems to be observant enough to be a good photographer, the reader must look a little deeper, question a little more and not take everything as it is presented.  It's amazing what you can see when you look a little deeper.  The big revelations may not be climactic–after all, they've been there all along–but their effects may well be.  And yet Chantel Guertin still manages to keep the text light-hearted and hopeful, never wallowing in family issues.

I had no idea that Pippa Greene would be coming back for another adventure after The Rule of Thirds, but I am delighted by Depth of Field in its furthering of Pippa's story and look forward to Book 3.  Here is my plea to Chantel Guertin: "There must be a next book!  How else will we know how Pippa's latest choices play out?  And you know which specific one I'm talking about, right?"  Happily, readers, you'll need to find out for yourselves.

Oh My Goth!: Goth Portraits by Evan Munday (Toronto)

Did I mention that October Schwartz, 

of Dead Kid Detective Agency (ECW, 2011) and Dial "M" for Morna (ECW, 2013), 

is goth?

  

Did I mention that author Evan Munday is also an illustrator? 

Did you realize that it's October and Halloween is just around the corner? 

Of course you did. 

So did the good people at Type Books (who brought us the amazing video The Joy of Books).  They've invited Evan Munday, author of The Dead Kid Detective Agency and Dial "M" for Morna, to draw quick goth portraits of customers this weekend. 

This photo of the window display at Type Books was retrieved from Evan Munday's blog, I don't like Mundays

So, if you're feeling a little goth or not, 

visit Type Books

at

883 Queen Street West

Toronto, ON

this weekend

Saturday, October 26, 2013   12 - 5 p.m.

or Sunday, October 27, 2013   12 - 4 p.m.

Drop by and meet Evan Munday, 

pick up a Dead Kid Detective Agency book or two

and

get your goth on!

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

Dial "M" for Morna: The Dead Kid Detective Agency, Book 2

Written by Evan Munday
ECW Press
978-1-77041-073-2
296 pp.
Ages 8-13
October, 2013

Dial "M" for Morna and for middle-grade, murder, mystery and for Munday, author Evan Munday, whose first book The Dead Kid Detective Agency (ECW Press, 2011) was shortlisted for the Silver Birch award and Sunburst Award for Young Adult Speculative Fiction.  In this sequel, Evan Munday has October Schwartz starting to make good on her promise to help solve the mysteries of the deaths of her five dead accomplices: Morna MacIsaac, Cyril Cooper,  Tabetha Scott, Kirby LaFlamme, and Derek Running Water.  First up: Morna, who died when she was thirteen years old in 1914 while living with her family at the Crooked Arms boarding house in their town of Sticksville.

With the help of the new history teacher and museum volunteer, Ms. Fenstermacher, October locates the old Crooked Arms and learns the identities and backgrounds of its former residents.  Amongst the MacIsaac's neighbours were an alleged traitor, an inventor, a suffragette, and a doctor, and, with input from a woman who speaks to October through a disconnected old-fashioned phone, the living teen delves into Morna's demise.

Meanwhile, in October's living world, her friends Yumi and Stacey earn a slot deejaying on the school radio station. While they know that Devin McGriff, member of the Phantom Moustache band and boyfriend of queen bee Ashlie Salmons, is enraged for losing out to them, a spate of hostilities couched in racist remarks catches Yumi, Stacey and October by surprise.

Luckily, October is able to breach both worlds to help solve Morna's death and the attacks staged against Yumi.  And, with a couple of surprise connections and revelations, Evan Munday left me (and undoubtedly all other readers) longing to learn more about Mr. Santuzzi and Fairfax Crisparkle and anticipating Book 3 in the series.

Past or present, there are a lot of nasty people around making others' lives miserable, willing to murder for their own needs, and directed by fears, arrogance and greed (and maybe even magic here). But with the Dead Kid Detective Agency (i.e., October and her deceased cohorts), wrongs are righted, the guilty are identified and justice is anticipated.  Evan Munday will draw you in so subtly that you'll be snagged before you realize it.  However, never think that you are just a reader, the vesicle into which words are poured from the page, when reading Dial "M" for Morna.  Evan Munday breaks down the fifth wall, speaking directly to his audience of young readers, enlightening them, reassuring them, humouring them, apologizing, and even hinting at plot developments.

You can expect the same kind of madcap exploits featured in book one – our plucky heroine with a penchant for black eyeliner and her five most deadest BFFs uncovering dark secrets that will rock the quiet town of Sticksville to its secretly rotten core and doing so in the zaniest possible manner. (pg. 11)

Watch for font changes to help determine whether the narrator is October or a third person (a.k.a. Evan Munday). And be prepared to enjoy Evan Munday's dry wit which he doles out generously in his subplots, his action scenes, and the voices and foibles of his characters.  While answers to the big questions i.e., "How did Morna die?" and "Who is harrassing Yumi?" are inevitable, don't expect all plot lines to find closure.  The beginnings of new mysteries, ready to be solved by The Dead Kid Detective Agency, are embedded, leaving clues sure to bear fruitful storylines. 

The Rule of Thirds

by Chantel Guertin
ECW Press
978-1-77041-159-3
192 pp.
Ages 13+
October 2013
Reviewed from Advance Reading Copy 

Most photographers will know The Rule of Thirds, the premise by which a frame is divided into thirds to help determine a photo's composition by placement.  This basic rule can make the difference between a photo that works and one that is solely documentation. Sixteen-year-old Philadelphia Greene, a.k.a. Pippa, photo editor of the school newspaper, president of the photo club, and daughter of a pro photographer, knows the rule of thirds.  And she can tell when there's something off about the composition of the parts.  But the photos that the new kid, handsome Ben Baxter, shows her to get in the photo club definitely work, thereby allowing him the opportunity to enter the Vantage Point photo competition.  Vantage Point, the temporal focus of all the chapter headings, drives everything Pippa does and wants, offering the opportunity to attend the Tisch School for the Arts camp at NYC.

"The photography competition–less than three weeks away, and whether I win or lose will alter the course of my life." (pg. 3)

But Ben's interest in her and confidence in connecting with her has Pippa perplexed, though somewhat intrigued. It's especially confusing when she gets a placement at St. Christopher's Hospital, the same hospital at which her father had died from pancreatic cancer just three months earlier. Here she reconnects with Dylan McCutter, an 18-year-old on whom she's been crushing for years.  Between dealing with panic attacks brought on by being around the hospital and other places associated with her father, and trying to get Dylan interested in her, even though he seems close to another girl who works at the hospital, Pippa continues to fulfil her placement obligations, visit her psychologist for grief counselling and keep photographing for Vantage Point.

Perhaps because of her grief, Pippa seems to be oblivious to a lot of goings-on around her, including how others see her.  So, when Ben continues to come on to Pippa, acting proprietary over her, and her best friend Dace starts running hot and cold, and there is a spate of technology thefts plaguing the school and the community, Pippa may notice but she doesn't take it in until it comes disastrously close to ruining everything she's been working towards.   

While Chanel Guertin does leave the reader satisfied that things will work out alright for Pippa in The Rule of Thirds, she doesn't distort circumstances to produce a blithe ending where the bad guy gets caught, the protagonist wins the competition, and boy and girl finally get together.  But things can and do still work themselves out, just as they often do in reality, though maybe not perfectly but credibly.  It's like that perfect photograph:  it might have all the right components but it's up to the photographer to see the art within and rearrange them to resonate for both the artist and the audience.  Chantel Guertin has accomplished that for the young adult reader, balancing fears, grief, romance, friendship, angst, ambitions and common sense, in different proportions to produce a picture that works.